Cool Mac Gear

iClock is a shareware application that replaces the menu clock with something a lot more powerful and customizable with three modules:
 
iClock Menubar Clock
iClock Calendar
iClock Stopwatch

With iClock you can:
• See the Time and Date simultaneously in the menubar.
• Get a birds eye view of user selectable time zones.
• Customize the Time and Date display in the menubar and menu in hundreds of ways. Including changing the font, color and size.
• Gives you a time zone calculator that finds the best time to connect up the people in as many time zones as you want.
• Have an easily accessible, at a glance system menu view of times/dates in as many parts of the world as you want.
• Add the people/companies you work with directly from the address book.
• Access the dial codes for countries around the world.
• Display in 12 or 24 hour time.
• Program custom alarms that are so easily accessible you will actually use them.
• Coinfigure iClock Calendar to show birthdays from Apple's Address Book and links to iCalendar.
• Set iClock calendar to float on top or below other windows and its transparency can be set.
• iClock Calendar accepts background pictures.
• Run a Screen Saver on your desktop using iClock's Screen Effects.
• CopyPaste users can conveniently add the CopyPaste menus to iClock.
• Time things with the iClock Stopwatch.

iClock is highly customizable using five different Preference panes.

The Main iClock menu bar readout displays more information in a much wider varity of configurations than the stock OS X clock does, and its pull-down menu provides access to iClock's many other features.

The iClock calendar displays like this in its default mode.

However the calendar preferences panel allows you to change display colors, fonts, and add a backgorund picture of your choice.

System requirements:
• Mac OS X 10.2 or higher
 
iClock is $20.00 shareware  
For more information, visit:
http://www.scriptsoftware.com/iclock/index.html

Memory and OS X

From Peter Blier

Hi Charles--

You motivated me to check out Memory Stick--what a great little app! I hadn't really noticed that my computer would gradually slow down, now that I'm using Jaguar -- but it turns out that was because I would periodically have to reboot in OS 9. Now I'm mostly in X, so I downloaded Memory Stick, and have been observing it, and here's what I'm finding.

Over time, as I open apps and use them, the amount of memory in the "Active" and "Inactive" (blue and yellow) segments increases (expected), but when apps are closed, the memory often is not released. Over time, the amount of free memory shrinks and shrinks, down to maybe 5% of total (I have 640 MB in my iBook, you'd think that would be plenty). At that point everything becomes glacially slow. On a portable this is a problem because the pageouts to the relatively slow portable hard disk both trash performance and deplete battery life. The only solution I've found is to Restart. Logging Out doesn't work! I have to restart to get that memory back.

This memory leak stuff is a real problem. The State of the Art in software, I'm afraid, is fabulous in Glitz and Features, but poor in the basics--Stability and Good Behavior. Symbolic of modern times in general, perhaps? Sigh.

Take care.
--Peter

Hi Peter;

Your experiences seem to be mirroring mine to a considerable degree.

Charles

Memory usage

From Matt Noel

I'm sure you've heard this by now, but the apparent recovery of memory after EasyFind is bogus. You had that memory all along.

The OS (like most Unix systems) likes to leave recently referenced memory buffers in place, in case the information in them is needed later. Usually this data is the content of files. The idea is that it's better to leave the data available, just in case it's referenced again, than to throw it away.

When the system needs more memory it will take that space when there is no truly free (never yet used) space left.

Doing a lot of disk operations where you read many files (which EasyFind does) forces the system to purge that memory. When it's all done there may be less memory left in this cached state than before.

You've done nothing to improve performance, all you did was change the color on the bar on a graph. I've done this myself with other tools (using du -sx / in the terminal does the same thing). It's strangely satisfying to the human. Matters not at all to the computer.

Matt Noel

Hi Matt;

Thanks for the explanation. As I noted in the column:

"However, freeing up that block of unused memory doesn't seem to alleviate the cumulative Finder slowdown. Only a full restart does that, temporarily. "

However, the EasyFind "fix" does seem to cut down on pageouts as indicated by the Memory Stick chime. If it's not actually freeing up memory, why would that be?

Charles

Freeing up memory in OS X

From Matthew Rosen

I just read the latest in your MacOS X Odyssey.

As per you issues with RAM consumption:

I use a utility called "MacJanitor" that allows one to manually run several UNIX "maintenance tasks." Various tasks are typically run between 3 AM and 5 AM on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. For users who do not leave their machines on overnight, these may not be completed (this especially common for laptop users).

Anyway, I have found the application to have a huge benefit to all users. Selecting to run the "Weekly" tasks performs the added bonus of cleaning out the system's virtual memory swap files and freeing up available RAM. This can be done at any time, and is quite useful when a rogue application does not relieve itself of used RAM upon quit. Many applications are guilty of this.

While MacOS X possesses very robust virtual memory management (you'll never get a "Out of Memory Error," a la MacOS 9), constant paging to disk will create a noticeable slowdown. Running apps in "hard RAM" will be faster.

Go here to download the app:
http://personalpages.tds.net/~brian_hill/macjanitor.html

Also, some additional suggestions:

I don't know your situation, so if you must keep Classic running, then, by all means, do. If not, launch it on a selective basis. Classic's a hog.

Again, I don't know how much RAM you have already, but adding RAM is one of the best ways to improve your MacOS X experience. No amount of advanced memory management can compare to benefit you'll receive by simply adding another chip.

Enjoy.

Feel free to reply with any questions.

Take care.

Matt Rosen

Hi Matt;

Thanks for the tips. MacJanitor sounds useful. I do need to keep Classic running to support a few applications that I haven't found satisfactory (at least to me) OS X native substitutes for.

I have 640 MB of RAM in both my G3 laptops, which is the max possible in the iBook.

Charles

Memory Problems

From Bob Merritt

Dear Mr. Moore-

I have been following AppleLinks for quite some time now, and find it both informative and entertaining. I am somewhat intrigued by the OS X memory saga. Based on some of your correspondence on the subject, I have been playing with MemoryStick and a few other memory programs, and found one intriguing happening which I have not seen mentioned before. When Apple's Disk Utility is used to repair permissions, it gobbles a bunch of memory and gives back very little! Running MacJanitor immediately thereafter restores the "missing" memory. Nasty little bug, I think.

Note that this is the case whether the computer has just booted or if there is substantial memory in use. In the latter case, the pageout alarm will ding right heartily, and may even induce an additional swapfile.

I wish you the best of luck in your many quests, computer and otherwise.

Bob

Thanks Bob;

Another piece in the puzzle.

Must get MacJanitor.

Charles

Camino vs Safari

From Jon Smith

Charles,

Congratulations on the record time in OSX. As for Camino, I found it a huge processor hog! I ran the new version and checked it's processor usage in Terminal using "top -u" and it was at 85-95% of the %CPU all the time. I was shocked! Safari uses about 4-6% when I am scrolling, changing websites, etc. I found this rather curious and it may be contributing to your memory usage or pageouts. I have no explanation for this but I stopped using Camino. I really liked it's speed and how it rendered pages. All in all, a great work in process for OSX.

By the way, I am using a G4/DP500 with a GB of RAM. I wonder how it hits your G3's?

Thanks for the great reads and the sharing of your Odyssey with OSX.

Jon R Smith

Hi Jon;

Just checked Memory Usage Getter, and Camino seems to be using only a modest amount of memory. It seems to play nicely on the Pismo. Fast and stable. Not sure what might be happening on your machine.

Charles

The OS X Odyssey archives may be accessed here:
http://www.applelinks.com/news/odyssey/

CM

Charles W. Moore